


Remake

by Fly



Category: Bayonetta (Video Games), Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (N64DD), Metal Gear, Metroid Series, Super Mario & Related Fandoms, Super Smash Brothers
Genre: Animated Actors, Crack Treated Seriously, Delusions, Dramatic Irony, Fanon, Gen, Main Character Syndrome, References to Depression, Shaggy Dog Story, Video Game History
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 01:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9100180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fly/pseuds/Fly
Summary: Cloud Strife storms into battle, for his cut of the paid DLC money. But no matter what he insists, it doesn't seem like he belongs.





	

The grass in the plaza is starred with daisies, and the water is a blue that almost hurts the eyes. Cloud swipes his gaze over the picnickers — a roster of all shapes, sizes, and species - and carries on straight past them for the barbecue.

"The food's free, right?" he asks the cook, who is roasting a mushroom the size of a melon. Its juice fizzes out onto the charcoal. "I'm a fighter, if it makes any difference."

The little man looks up, eyes large with suspicion under the peak of his cap.

"Huh? A guest, are you?"

"Nah," Cloud shrugs. "Paid DLC. I'm only doin' this for my cut of the Nintendo Wallets. Can't be too proud in this line of work."

The cook studies Cloud’s face, frowning. Cloud frowns back. They were already past the part where the cook was supposed to start gushing about how Cloud’s game changed his life, or telling him about this great idea he had for a sequel.

"What's your name?" he asks. Fans tend to appreciate an interest, even when they appreciate you for not being interested.

"I'm Luigi!” The little man doffs his cap. “The main character of the Super Mario Bros. series."

"Great to meet you, Luigi," Cloud says, offering a handshake. "I'm the main character of the Final Fantasy series."

Luigi drops his spatula onto the grill.

"I knew I recognised you from somewhere!" he splutters, trying to shake his hand. "But, but, you look so different…!"

"Yeah, no big," Cloud says, running his unemployed hand through his hair, “I like to change it up with the times now and then, don’t —"

"Excuse me for being so rude!” Luigi blurts, “it's just that it's so hard to tell sometimes!" Cloud nods, patient and understanding. "I'm such a big, huge, super-huge fan! You’re a huge inspiration to oddballs and rejects like me.”

“Mm,” Cloud says, not having had an opportunity to stop nodding yet. “I get that a lot, you know — of course I do. But no matter how many times I hear it, it still makes me —”

“Because I've always wanted to find out that all this time, I'm really from the Moon!”

“Huh?”

“But when I think about Zemus's gh-ghosts up there —"

“Oh. Wait, I think you’re —”

“ —I’m ever so happy to be working with you —”

"I'm not Cecil," Cloud says, pulling a face he hopes indicates that he’s far too cool to be offended by someone making a mistake that only ever happened in the opposite direction, ever.

Luigi stares, his hand slowly loosening its grip, then howls and hops as he picks up his blistering spatula.

"He must be another company’s baby," suggests a flat female voice from somewhere out across the grass, muffled behind a wall of armour. "We cannot be expected to know the identities of the guests."

"I'm not just some guest!" Cloud insists, turning to face the rest of the group. His sword slaps into his hand; it whirls like a baton, gathering up all of the attention and placing it onto his back. "It doesn’t matter if you know me or you don’t, because I know exactly who I am! I'm Cloud! A former main character of _Final Fantasy VII_ ; a first-class game for the Nintendo 64 DD!"

The other fighters, who had been all watching him in the apparent hope that he’d do something interesting, start turning to each other, nudging shoulders and limbs and pointing at Cloud with puzzled faces. Cloud’s slumping in despair when the atmosphere is cracked by a voice and a spray of garlicy crumbs:

“ _Wahaha_! Come up with a better story, nerd! Everyone knows the N64DD didn’t have any games!”

This is enough for the whole of the rest of the crowd to launch on the heckler, as if, Cloud can only guess, he’d been driving everyone here crazy for a very long time.

“ _Since when have you ever known what you’re talking about, Wario?_ ”

“ _I’m a CEO of a major game company! I’m smarter than everyone and my resume proves it —”_

“ _Just shut up, eat your garlic cake and let the grownups talk. Leave your ‘main character syndrome’ at the door.”_

“ _Aw, you just hate me ‘cos I’m beautiful —”_

“ _Pi-ka-_ chyuu _!_ ”

A thrown hot dog boomerangs through the air. Cloud rubs his eye sockets with his thumb and forefinger. A life of pretending has made him enough of a showman to know when he’s lost his audience.

“Please,” he interjects, “I know I’ve got my share of problems, but I’m not trying to deceive anyone…”

No-one is listening to him.

“As far as I know, this is where I really belong.”

He whips his head to the side to dodge a flying lump of cake, and straightens his shoulders. He’s coming across weak.

"You can come to me if you need anything," he announces, just in case anyone is looking his way. "I used to be in SOLDIER, and my series is a pretty big deal. I can pull favours you wouldn't even believe. So, Luigi,” — he catches a thrown plate without looking, and in one smooth movement, presents it to the chef cowering behind the barbecue — “is the food free?"

* * *

 

It doesn't hurt to get hit here. The pain a character feels is not the same as the pain that people feel. Even back home he just bled numbers. But that doesn't mean that when Samus gets in a solid shot, and he rockets off, gory with dust and stars, pinballing between floor and ceiling until he's punched back down onto the battlefield by a wall against his back, that he doesn't feel _something_.

He’d missed gravity. As an early three-dimensional lead of the early three-dimensional era, his palette is flat without up and down. The last time he'd been fighting like this, in the last place, there had only been one direction - towards the enemy. He'd slid that way through the air, like a bead on a string as invisible and insistent as the string that had jerked him to the Northern Crater all those years ago.

But here, the ground holds onto him. The only time he goes flying, it's when he's losing.

He ducks in near her, short-hops off the ground and begins to spiral up a Finishing Touch, but her Shield eats it and her fist locks around his throat. He kicks, staring into the screen of her helmet; he catches a glimpse of her eyes, large, and sad, and ridiculous, and for a second he’s not even trying to breathe — but then she scoffs and slings him into the infinite. Plummeting backwards, the stage is a tunnel of colour. Even the dull colours here are brighter than anything he thought he'd ever see again.

* * *

 

When Cloud goes to his room, he finds someone has been in there and filled it with his things. Beside the sink in his ensuite bathroom are fresh containers of the hair stuff he likes; his flip phone is on the desk, snaked to a charger above the minibar. While checking his bruises in the mirror, he sees something black, hovering behind him in the air like an unspoken threat. He freezes, grabs at his head with shaking hands, and turns with trepidation to see it’s — not what he thought it was. It's just that Black Cape he used to wear, hanging on the door of the wardrobe, in case he wanted a change of clothes.

Cloud takes its hanger, slumps onto his bed with it draped in his lap, and polishes the wolf ornament's muzzle with his thumb. Looking at the outfit now, it seems quite new, and somehow oddly small. It used to seem big enough to smother him.

He's holding it out at arm's length, wondering what he’s supposed to do with it, when the door knocks. Cloud throws the outfit onto the floor while bounding towards the doorknob, and tries to put himself back into a First Class mindset.

"Hey there. Sorry," he says, leaning against the door’s edge, "I'm not able to accept dates any more in these situations. You wouldn’t believe the kind of debates that’d happen."

The armoured figure in front of him looks back, blank. Even the glimmer of her eyes through her visor is without amusement. Cloud drops his eyes to stare at his foot, before forcing a smirk, trying to play it off as if his unfunniness was just a joke she was on too low an irony level to understand.

"You are Cloud, aren’t you?" she says, her voice not expressing any particular emotion. "I thought that, as you are a newcomer, it would be appropriate to come and thank you for the game."

Cloud lets her in and paces backwards and away, staring out of the window into the garden. He’s never had a problem showing off in a group, but when it comes down to simple conversation between himself and one other person it always feels like he's waiting to be caught out.

"Sorry," he says. "I mean — thanks, but you deserved a better fight. I messed up too many times." In his mind’s eye, he can’t stop seeing the parts where he’d kept leaping up for the edge with his sword above his head, before inexplicably slamming the blade down, and riding it all the way down into the void. Why had he kept doing that? "It's not like I don't know what I'm doing, I've done this kind of game before. I think it’s just, I’m not used to the new system. Maybe I should stick to reading menus."

"I do not doubt you," Samus tells him, in her curiously wooden way. "The only people allowed to come here are those characters most strongly remembered.”

"Well," Cloud says, scratching the back of his head and facing her, trying to seem modest, "they say I’m still pretty popular after all these years. How long has it been?”

“The N64DD? That would be twenty years.”

Cloud lets the cute act drop.

“Twenty years,” Cloud repeats. “You’re right. I never bothered to count. Twenty years. That’s almost my real age… I’ve been a mixed-up twenty-something for twenty years.” His fist closes against the window; he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “You know, that’s the thing I hate about being a character: You’re stuck. You can’t really change, not until you’re forgotten. You just freeze the way people remember you, even if that memory is an illusion.”

“I don’t think so,” Samus says. “We often get to destroy childhood memories. At least, that is what they say I did.”

“No.” Cloud shakes his head. “A gamer’s childhood memory is tougher than diamond. It can’t be destroyed by anything. When there’s a conflict between it and the truth, it’s the truth that changes itself to fit.” He draws away from the window with a sharp cringe: “Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. Things aren’t that bad any more, and...”

“No,” she says, sounding a little brighter, “it is interesting. Nobody has ever told me that before.”

“Mm,” Cloud says, trying to play it off cool, “come to me later if you need any more stories about how gamers are terrible. I’ve been in this business long enough to have some good ones, apparently.”

Twenty years is a long time, full of distractions and development and time to be forgotten in. He wonders what about him meant he hadn’t been.

“What is this dog?”

“Dog?” Cloud repeats, clueless, until he sees she’s scooped his Black Cape up off the floor, and cringes even harder. “H-hey, can you…”

“Is this your costume —”

“Nothing to do with me,” Cloud says, “not now, anyway. A few years ago, I had kind of a ‘goth phase’. You could say I was depressed.”

“The Black Dog.”

“It’s a Wolf, actually,” Cloud corrects, a bit sore. “I swear it looked cool in 2005.”

He recoils when Samus tries to hand the outfit back to him, so she lays it on his bed. The gentleness of the gesture looks absurd coming from six foot of gleaming power armour, and Cloud, embarrassed, lets out a laugh.

“I had best leave,” she says, and the back of Cloud’s neck unknots with relief. “I’ll remember what you said.”

“I’d rather you forget it, to be honest,” Cloud says. “You’re off to fight, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Samus says. She slaps her gauntlet around her arm cannon. “Against Ike. Do you know him? He’s a handsome young mercenary hero from a fantastical planet who fights with a sword so large that it —”

“I get the picture,” Cloud says. “In that case, you’d better win. If one of my wannabes could beat you and not me, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

Her voice strong with enthusiasm about combat even if nothing else, she says, “I’ll do my best,” and begins to leave, her shoulder guards squeaking against the wooden frame. Then she hesitates.

“You seem ill at ease. You should explore.”

“Explore?” Cloud says, frowning. “I guess I could at least see the flower garden —”

“No, away from the grounds,” she says. “The landscape beyond.”

“Hmm,” Cloud says, and scratches his head. Then he remembers the promise he made to himself before he came to this world, and makes up his mind. He must, at least, fight against the pattern, even if it’ll sort him into his place in it eventually. “The truth is, I’m really hoping to fit in here, and... I mean, with all the attention, I won’t get the time to go.”

“It is a lonely world. Perhaps you can go if no-one wants your company,” says Samus.

Cloud shrugs.

“I’m one of the most popular and successful characters of all time. Of course they’ll want to be around me. I mean, who wouldn’t?”

* * *

 

 

The ground around the Stadium is lush, and windswept from the air that flows between the floating islands. The further you go, the more the ground is erupted with great sunken spires and the claws of shattered temples. There's no sign of living civilisation, which doesn't surprise Cloud - everything in this place is obsessed with remembering its own history. He walks for a few hours, enjoying the fertility and vividness of a world untouched by Mako extraction, making comfortable running jumps over yawning canyons to reach further and more mysterious ruins, and brooding in an indulgent sort of way that he can't remember when he'd last had the opportunity for. The sunset has banded the sky golden and pink by the time Cloud returns to the grounds of the Stadium; he flops down to rest beside a still and perfect koi pond, and starts using his reflection in the water to take mirror-selfies with his flip phone.

Just when he thinks he's got his hair falling just so it leaves the perfect too-cool-for-you shadow down his cheekbone, a shower of fish flakes interrupt his reflection. He looks up.

“Luigi?” he says. "I hadn't noticed you were here."

"Yaah!" says Luigi, who apparently hadn't noticed Cloud either. "I mean, do you like fish too?"

Cloud relaxes, slumping back on the dense grass with his arms behind his head.

"I still can't get over how colourful everything is here," he says. "I mean, I remember things were bright back in the old days, but I've been through some other things since then and… I mean, I never thought I'd be able to…" He trails off. "Look, never mind, don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm saying. I haven't eaten all day."

"It helps if you make sure you're drinking enough water," Luigi says, wisely. "See, you can learn all sorts of things from fish."

"That's why they call them 'schools'," Cloud replies, not thinking about it.

"Eh?" says Luigi. Then he brightens, realising Cloud had made a joke, and that it had to have been deliberate. "You don't act the way they told me you did. Are you feeling ill? My bro is a doctor and he…"

"What?" Cloud says, sitting up with masochistic interest. "What sort of stuff are they saying about me?"

"I can’t say," Luigi says, kicking at a clump of grass, before saying, "the others are saying you have 'main character syndrome'."

"Everyone?" Cloud asks.

Luigi looks flustered. "Well, some of us are on your side…"

"Who?"

Luigi jabs a thumb into his rounded belly. "Me! They tell me I have 'main character syndrome' as well, so, pah.”

“Yeah. They’re like that with everyone,” Cloud agrees. Then he says, “by the way, what’s ‘main character syndrome’?”

“Well, it’s… OK, it’s like…” Luigi gesticulates, “suppose I have two bananas.”

“OK,” Cloud says. “Actually, you don’t have something that’s not a food analogy? Because —”

“One banana’s a good shape, and shiny, and just ripe enough to be extra-sweet without being too squidgy, and the other one is — ehh. It’s okay. Not as big, too bruised… I mean, you’d eat it if there wasn’t another option, or if you hadn’t eaten in a while — you would eat it, probably, haha!”

Cloud spreads his hands over his taut stomach. “Probably. Is this going anywhere?”

“Imagine I peel both bananas, take the fruit out, and then swap them over. So now the second banana looks like the top banana, but when you actually bite…” Luigi winces sympathetically. “Now suppose that trumped-up second banana was acting like it deserved top-banana treatment, and kept cutting ahead in line and parking across two spaces every morning. That’s ‘main character syndrome’, and everyone here is supposed to have it.”

“Mm,” Cloud says, “that wasn’t helpful or even funny, but thanks, I guess. Wouldn’t you notice if someone had opened up the bananas already?”

“Oh no. You see, when you’re a big celebrity like myself, you get used to having your fruit arrive pre-peeled.”

Cloud nods. “I see.”

“Did you know I am so famous they dedicated a whole year to me?” Luigi continues, his eyes turned upwards as if to the stars. “They say that children born in the Year of Luigi will grow up with my loyalty and courage, and my handsomeness too.”

Cloud, born in the Year of the Tiger and a Leo to boot, gives a big cat’s yawn, stretches, and rolls onto his side, uninterested. He supposes he could brag a little about all the lonely girls and awkward boys who drew strength from him when ashamed of their own weakness, but, in truth, he doesn’t care that much about them, except that they grew up into hip Millennials with nostalgia and credit cards.

“So what about me says ‘main character syndrome’?” he asks, plucking a handful of grass and letting it fall off into the breeze.

“Nothing in particular, you know what they are like. _Cricche, cricche._ But… if I had to suggest just one teeny inkling of a thing… and I’m not saying I agree…”

“…mm-hmm…”

“…there was that time today when you and Ike —”

“Oh, &%@$ off,” Cloud grawlixes, swatting at the air and rolling onto his other side, “I really don’t care. He knew it was coming as soon as I showed up.”

“He knew what was coming? None of us even know who you are! —”

“Look, it’s not like he can compete with me, so I didn’t care enough to start a fuss. I just said that since he was making so good off stealing my whole thing, the least he could do would be to buy me a meal. But I guess it’s all my fault, as usual.”

“But this whole business is built on imitating what works! This one time, my bro and I went on a double-date with the Giana Sisters, and those girls are —”

“Forget it,” Cloud says, shaking hair out of his eyes, “I shouldn’t have had any expectations. Of course a bunch of characters from games for children — no offense — would act like it’s middle school. And I’m not here to be liked. I’m here for my pay, so I’d probably be a lot more chilled out if I was seeing any of it.”

“There’s the Wii Fit Trainer, she likes you,” Luigi says, apparently convinced that Cloud wants to hear it.

"Her? But she's even crazier than I am. I challenged her to a squatting contest for food money the other day, and as far as I know she's still at it."

Luigi gives a sprite’s full-body sigh.

“I suppose there’s Samus,” he says. “But they say that since her last game, when they changed her, she’ll believe anything a man tells her, just so long as he’s a big enough jerk.”

Cloud looks up at the clouds.

“You’re trying to tell me that no-one here actually believes a word I’m saying about being from the N64DD, aren’t you?”

Luigi presses his fingertips together.

“Is there some reason why they shouldn’t believe it?” he asks, his tone weary and a little patronising, as if he was a teacher and he’d talked Cloud through two pages of exercises on this already.

“Is there any reason why I’d lie? I’m the first to admit my memories don’t make a lot of sense, but I remember the thrill in the hearts of the fans when it was announced in the magazines… It has to be real, I know it. Luigi, don’t _you_ believe me?”

“Ehh,” says Luigi, smiling and rubbing his mouth.

Cloud gets up and wipes dried grass out of his hair.

“Of course you don’t,” he says, deliberately knocking into Luigi’s shoulder with his knee as he makes to head back inside.

“Hey, I didn’t say —”

“You said it with your face.”

Cloud doesn’t bother looking round.

“No-one bought it!” Luigi calls after him, as he continues down the paved path towards the Village. “No-one bought that console either! I mean, for you to have millions of fans… you’re not so big a star that basic mathematics don’t…”

Feeling his patience beginning to break its limit, Cloud starts marching back towards Luigi, and he’s just about to shout at him that maybe he is just that good, when he stops dead. His pulse pummels his skull.

In the distance behind Luigi, deep in the distant plains of memories, is a tall, male figure, in silhouette against the low sun. He has the sturdy dark boots and powerful shoulders of a soldier, and is wearing a Black Cape.

There is no response. Cloud can only watch in horror as the man in the Black Cape disappears behind a pillar, and then never re-emerges, as if he was never there. Straining his eyes for any trace of him, looking this way and that way, Cloud keeps thinking he sees the Black Cape’s outline shimmering in the air itself like a scar.

“Are you alright?” Luigi’s voice finally penetrates.

“Ugh,” Cloud grunts, falling to his knees. He grips at his head, then remembers where he is, and stagger-runs back towards the Village without looking around.

That evening, Cloud takes his Black Cape off the floor, scrunches it up into a ball, and stuffs it into the back of his wardrobe. It feels nice to cast himself as fighting nobly and powerlessly against the inevitable, until he makes himself realise how that story’s going to end. He ends up sitting on the carpet; he suddenly remembers Luigi’s words, grabs his phone and beeps through his contacts for Mario’s number, but then he snaps the phone’s clamshell shut, and gives a long sigh through his nose. He’s just too angry about this put it into words, and, more to the point, too tired, and too old.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mario is so perfect at his job that, as he draws up the stage layout on the whiteboard, his marker pen doesn’t even squeak.

“Here’s our strategy,” he announces, arcing arrows between blocked-in platforms. “I jump up over here, punch ‘em at you — _hee-yah!_ — and you provide the Finishing Touch.”

“Right,” Cloud says. He wipes his face to get the blood to flush back into it. “Is it even worth asking who we’re up against?”

“What? Oh no.” Squiggle, squiggle, squiggle. “I’m confident we’ll win if we work together! Two famous heroes, side by side, doing the thing only we do best!”

“It’s not like I’m really that famous, compared to you,” Cloud says, staring at the black web on the whiteboard. Thinking about it, all his problems had started when someone got the idea that Cloud was iconic enough to star opposite Mickey Mouse, and the more time he spent here, the more he realised that the only character who could have been himself in that situation was Mario.

“Oh, don’t mention that! None of that matters. I’m just a regular Giotto at heart, like you are!” Mario leans down, peering eagerly into his eyes. “That’s why they cheer us on! They wouldn’t like you so much if you were so cool you had no real feelings.”

“Not true,” Cloud says. He shrugs. “Sorry. Did you see our opponents, or even what they were wearing, or —”

“Is something wrong? Is the strategy —”

Cloud looks up, aghast. “No. I mean, the strategy’s fine, but it’s just…” He presses his face into his cupped hands, preparing himself. Mario wouldn’t have any reason to judge him, and, anyway, he was too nice. “I don’t know how to say it, but I saw my old “co-star” earlier. A man in a Black Cape. Are we up against him?”

“Man in the Black Cape? You mean Mickey Mouse?” Mario laughs. “You bet he’d need more money than they pay us here before he’d even crawl out of his hole, _mamma mia.”_

“Ugh,” says Cloud, embarrassment taking over, “forget it, it’s nothing.”

“You going to be OK? You look pale.”

“That’s just what I look like,” Cloud says, trying to make a joke out of it, “sorry. I’m alright, I think.”

“We can’t go into a match with that attitude! You need to pep up a bit! C’mon, Cloud, say it with me! ‘Let’s-a-go!’”

He hesitates, vaudeville gloves clenched, looking at Cloud expectantly. Cloud drums his heels on the floor beneath him, and takes a deep breath.

“Let’s go,” he attempts. It comes out sounding like he’d never heard the phrase before in his life. “Let’s do it, let’s go, let’s mosey...”

“ _Let’s-a-go!_ ”

“Let’s-a-no,” Cloud decides, and paces out of the locker room.

* * *

 

 

“I just can’t do this,” Cloud is explaining, on his way down the main corridor of Heroes’ Village apartment block. His bag is hanging off the bolts on his shoulder armour. “Every time I try to do anything, he always shows up as well, and makes everything miserable.”

Mario is hopping around in front of him, trying to block his path.

“It’s only one match! I wish you’d tell me more about — !”

Cloud does not stop walking. He swipes a fist across his body. “Trust me. When he gets his hooks in, it’s always the same. Everyone here’ll be glad to see the back of me anyway.” He lowers his gaze to meet Mario’s eyes with a Mako glare. “I was never interested in any of you.”

An uncomfortable psychic buzzing rattles the strip of cartilage in his nose.

(A pity,) Mewtwo says in his mind, sliding though its bedroom wall into the corridor and bobbing along after him like a malevolent balloon. Cloud puts a finger to his nose to suppress a sneeze, and then tries with all his power not to give the Pokémon any attention. (I had been interested in your eco-radical activism. I had hoped we could find solidarity in the discussion of strategies for the extermination of the human species.)

“I’m not interested in saving the Planet,” Cloud tells it, voice as flat as Samus’, the cocky-ironic lilt gone. He’s slipping back into an old script again, a simplified interpretation, but after so many years of it, he knows how to change his shape to fit it. “I’m going.”

It seems to take a long time to move the handrail of the main revolving door back even a little. He wonders if it’s broken, and lifts his hands reflexively, only to notice that they are taking a long time to move as well. His body is carrying out his instructions in someone else’s time.

“Weren’t you supposed to be my opponent in the Doubles match?” someone purrs behind him, and the world goes midnight-pink. “I’m constantly disappointed by the lack of manners in this modern age.”

“Shut up,” Cloud says, his voice smeared stupid-deep by the time magic. He turns his head in woozy slow motion. Everything, air, colour and feeling, is saturated with a smutty floral perfume that reminds him a little of Sexy Cologne, but even more ghastly — is that… rosemary in it? “You don’t know anything. You’re just some Guest.”

It happens as fast as he’d be able to blink even at normal speed. Tight threads, some kind of tiny wires, knit up his fingers, bonding him in place, and when he looks down he’s mittened to the door rail by cocoons of black hair. In the reflection on the glass is the dark, almost caped shape of Bayonetta, vamping towards him on spring-loaded legs.

That’s not rosemary in the perfume, Cloud realises as she gets closer, it’s rose. Wild rose…

The scent reaches in through his gut and twists, and Cloud ends up thinking, bitterly, of the last place, and Firion’s experience with the Lamia Queen, or his lack of experience.

“The trouble with you —” Bayonetta leans forward, as if to lecture him — “is that you pretend you’re a Fake Cool Boy, but all you really are is just another Fake Geek Boy. If you like video games so much, why don’t you even know what platform _Final Fantasy VII_ was released for?”

Not this again. Cloud turns his sigh into a big inhale, waiting for Bayonetta’s attention to slip, then explodes all of the muscles in his arms and back at once with the flashing, quicksilver speed of a SOLDIER. Even slowed as he is, it is swift; but all that happens is that the door rattles and his knuckles pop under the webbing. What was this stuff made of?

“There aren’t even any ‘men in Black Capes’ on the roster. You certainly live in a world of your own illusion, don’t you?”

“I saw him,” Cloud croaks, knowing full well that she’s right, and his seeing anything counts for nothing. The air is smeared with timestretched words from the onlookers, and he has no idea what it is they’re trying to say to him. “He was right here. He looked just like he did in the memories…”

“Of course he did,” says Bayonetta, tilting her head condescendingly. “It takes great skill to see things other than what you are expecting to see. Sometimes, our minds even contort what really exists into a shape that is our own.”

Cloud hesitates. Something feels important, like she’d chosen to give this long moment to him, to tell him something that only a Witch might know. Wait — how did he even know she was a Witch?

_Things you should know about but didn’t, and things you shouldn’t know about that you did —_

Cloud’s ears pop as the air rushes into his head, and he jumps back, time moving the way it should. Mario’s voice speeds into intelligibility —

“ — _picking on the new guy!_ ”

“Don’t worry,” Cloud finds himself saying, rubbing and flexing his freed hands, “it’s fine. It’s just a thing between the two of us.” He runs a hand through his hair, then looks up at Bayonetta’s face with his luminous eyes half-closed in a smoulder — “Turns out I’m sort of into it.”

Bayonetta looks down at him.

“Well, in that case, it’s even more of a shame that you stood me up,” Bayonetta says, not flirtatious, but blunt and almost cutesy, as if Cloud is the one bringing sexuality into it. “I could have given you a lot more of where this came from. Let me give you a hand with your bags.”

Cloud knows a magic slap is coming as soon he hears her say _give you a hand_ , congratulates himself for spotting it, and raises his fists to protect his face just in time for her gun-heel to smack into his gut. He tumbles backwards in a shower of glass, sliding down stone steps into the gravelled courtyard, and lands, legs splayed.

Bayonetta’s elongated shape dominates the doorway, all cockily arched hips as she pushes her spiky hair back with her hand — Cloud growls and pulls himself up off the front path, small stones dripping from the leather of his gloves.

“Stop,” he says, flipping the sword off his back marching back up the steps. “You know what your problem is? You think you’re better than everyone, magic spells and big weapons and poses, but the thing is, you probably hate yourself.”

“What would make you think that?” Bayonetta says. She looks around at the assembled crowd, and shrugs.

“Look at everything you’re doing. You wouldn’t be doing it if I hadn’t got there first.”

“And nothing that is you came from anywhere else, of course,” Bayonetta says. “Consider it, ‘Blue-eyes’ — if you were ever anything to anyone, it is because they shaped you that way, and you should never forget it.” And she begins to vamp off through the entrance hall, whipping out a lollipop and gesticulating with it like a cigarette holder — “I expect a lot of people told you that your game was ‘art’? Honestly. The universe’s most typical case of ‘main character syndrome’.”

“You’re runnin’ away?” Cloud shouts after her, enraged. Mario’s large hand grabs at his wrist to hold him back, and he tries to wriggle out of his grip, watching her sway up the plush steps to the upper level. “You wanted to fight me? I’ll take you on, right now. I’m Cloud,” he says. “I’m a SOLDIER 1st Class, and I’m a classic of the medium, and I’m…”

Cloud sees a flash of gleaming orange out of the corner of his eye. Samus emerges from the hall he’d come from, dodging past Mewtwo and nodding at Mario. Then she turns to Cloud.

“You forgot this,” she says, the Black Dog hanging from her hand.

“…not interested,” Cloud finishes, and shrinks through the main doors.

 

 

* * *

 

“ _Hello, this is the Finance Department, how may I —”_

“Yeah, hi. Basically, I haven’t seen any of my money. I need it, fast. Got a long trip coming up.”

“ _Yes, I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems. Who is this that’s —”_

“Cloud.”

“ _Mr McCloud? It might not have shown up in your account yet —”_

“Fox? No, I’m… Cloud’s my first name, Cloud Strife.”

“ _Strife? That’s… Excuse me. Can you wait a moment while I transfer you?_ ”

Synthesised orchestral music wheezes its way out of Cloud’s phone speaker and spreads in the air around him like germs. Cloud looks down at the little piano-black clamshell in his hand, before continuing on his way forward over the wind-bent grass. Surrounded by the music, it’s faintly nostalgic; he hasn’t done this in years, and probably never will again. Things have moved on.

“ _Hello,_ ” crackles another voice, after an amount of time, “ _Collaboration and Coordination office. How can I help?_ ”

Cloud turns the speaker off and clamps the phone back against his ear.

“Yeah, what’s up. I’m Cloud Strife and I haven’t been paid.”

“ _Cloud,_ ” the voice responds. “ _Glad you contacted us. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a while, but you weren’t answering your calls._ ”

“Can’t help it,” Cloud says, attempting to pitch his shrug down the phone with his voice, “old habits die hard.”

“ _Didn’t you even check your voicemail? We’ve been having a problem processing your payment, and we need you to confirm some of your details again. It looks like when you were filling out your form you might have made one or two mistakes._ ”

“Ah, so that’s what this is,” Cloud says. He licks his lips against the bite of wind. “Yes, sorry, I think I know. Where it asks for my current Job, I left it blank because I didn’t think my Materia setup was —”

“ _Under Platform it lists you as being on the Nintendo 64DD, so we… Cloud, is something the matter?”_

Cloud stops in his tracks.

“Uh. No, I’m…”

“ _It’s not just bureaucracy, we can’t get the proper clearances if you haven’t submitted your actual Platform history. They take IP ownership very seriously these days, and…”_

Cloud takes the phone away from his ear, letting the voice turn into a tinny chirp. He wants to hang up, but the truth is, where he’s from doesn’t matter any more.

He puts the phone back against his skull.

“Please,” he says, all pride gone, “please just give me the money. I’ll be whoever you want. I just need to get out of here.”

“ _Financial trouble? Didn’t anyone tell you that there’s a new project on the horizon that —”_

“And I’m not doin’ the Remake!” Cloud explodes. “I’m never going to do it, why do people keep asking?”

“ _Seriously, Cloud, come on. Everyone else is on board and they’ve been wanting it for a decade, it’s just you they’re waiting for. They can’t do it without you —_ ”

“I don’t care! This isn’t a problem that can be solved by closing my eyes and pretending it’s still the Nineties. I froze too late. I can’t combat the memories, and I can’t live in them, so there’s no way I’m doing the Remake!”

Cloud slaps the phone shut. The sound echoes in a way that makes him focus; he looks around himself to see where he’d ended up, as if waking up from a sleep in a strange room.

Around him is the ruin of an ancient church, worn down to little more than lichen-pocked stones sunk into the moss. Beyond its crumbling front arch is the edge of this floating continent — the ‘Final Destination’, Cloud thinks. With heavy and brooding footsteps he walks all the way down the aisle, past effigies of sleeping knights on stone beds, and looks over the rim.

Wind blares into his eyes. As far as he’s aware, this is the way out, but he can see nothing but rolling clouds, folding and swirling into the infinite.

“So what do you think I should do?” he asks the carving of the dead knight beside him. “Carry on or pull out? And if I pull out, where am I going to go?”

Its face is handsome, yet utterly unmemorable, and its eyes are closed in pious sleep.

“Forget it, it doesn’t matter. I’m too famous to take advice from the likes of you. No-one even knows who you are.”

A flat voice answers, “I do.”

Cloud looks up, ashamed to be seen while feeling this awful.

“Samus? Did you follow me out here?”

“The ruins on this world are an answer to a question that makes no sense,” she says, ignoring him, talking as if narrating her life. “This world was constructed so that constructs like us could do battle. There is nostalgia here, but no history. And so that is how I began to suspect that these knights mark the graves of characters who have been forgotten.”

Cloud had been distracted from his brooding mood by how strangely she was acting, but as soon as she stops talking, sadness claims him again. He reaches out and touches the tip of the knight’s nose with an armoured finger.

“For all I know, I might have known him,” he says, peering up the knight’s worn nostrils. “I can’t remember anything right now. My head’s a mess. Samus, do you remember anything about me?”

“What?”

“Where did I come from? Tell me, how did I get here?”

“I don’t know you,” she says. “How could I know?”

“I don’t know. I guess I hoped…” Cloud shakes his head to bring himself to his senses. “I thought I belonged here, but I’m starting to realise I really don’t. Thing is, I don’t know where I should be. The illusion is so clear in my mind that it’s shattered the truth. Even if I know it’s wrong, I just can’t shake it away, and it’s…”

He looks at Samus, unsurprised to only see his own reflection in her visor; but she just walks up towards him and hands him a foil container.

“Eat,” she tells him. “Shut up, and stop thinking.”

The smell hits Cloud before he can even peel off the cardboard lid — two mushroom kebabs and a helping of curry noodles, cold tournament leftovers thick in their own grease, but Cloud is so powerlessly hungry he can’t even pretend he doesn’t care. He polishes off both kebabs and spoons the noodles into his mouth with the naked skewers, devouring everything in less than a minute.

“Thank you,” he says, and burps.

Samus shrugs. Cloud shrugs back, feeling the food settling into the bottom of his stomach. He is shaking with energy. He wipes his mouth, and hiccups.

“You didn’t come all the way out here just to feed me, did you?” Cloud asks. “That’s pretty babying.”

“I did not like the idea of you making the decision to leave on an empty stomach,” she says.

Cloud runs a hand through his hair.

“Ah, you came out here because you were feeling guilty. You thought you were the one who’d scared me off!”

“Not interested,” she says.

Cloud shakes his head. “Nah. You went into my room. You went through my things. You were pretty interested.”

Samus gives him a mocking thumbs-down. “Stop flattering yourself. I heard you were leaving, so I went looking for…”

“…me?”

“Yes. And when I did not find you, I went looking for an excuse.”

“An excuse?”

“To say goodbye properly. In case you became another Deleter.”

“Who? Delita?”

“ _Deleter_ ,” Samus repeats. “A Guest from the last cycle. I feel the impression they left in me, but everything else is deleted from my mind. So it is how I think of them.”

“Of course,” says Cloud, “I think I understand.” He nods, always eager to explain plot points himself instead of let anyone tell them to him. “It’s because Guests don’t belong to this world or share its laws. So once they’re gone, that’s it — you can’t mention them again, or think of them, or the times you had together. The universe won’t allow them to be remembered. Rights management. That’s why Guests can never really belong.”

“Yes,” Samus says, quietly.

Cloud glances over at the carvings again, and sighs.

“Right,” he says, getting up, “thanks for the food. You know, you were the only person to notice I hadn’t been able to afford to eat. I’ll try to remember that in future, though I can’t promise anything. Things aren’t looking good for me.” He hangs his head. “Samus, I owe you an apology. I haven’t been telling the truth to anyone.”

“I think what you told me when we first met was very true.”

“Not that part,” says Cloud, “about everything else. So, I’m sorry about what I said and how I acted, all of it. And, pass it on to the others if you can.” He begins pacing towards the edge. “I can’t stay if the Man in the Black Cape is here. I don’t even know any more if he is. I might have just invented him out of a rag in the wind and my own imagination. Even thinking he’s here is a symptom of my ‘main character syndrome’.”

“He was quite respectful to me,” Samus says.

It takes Cloud a second to understand.

“What?” he says. “You saw him? You’re serious? When?”

Samus gestures at him with the cannon on her arm, telling him to slow down.

“There is a man in the ruins who wears a dark cape. I can confirm. We have shared a conversation.”

“And he was actually respectful?” Cloud asks, shaking from foot to foot. “He wasn’t just talking in that way where he’s all cool and polite but it’s all about how superior he is?”

“He asked me if the new cycle had started yet, so I told him. He said it was good and that I must fight, that I had the strength of a beast and core of a beauty. I asked him who he was and he said, for now, he was not even being a memory.”

Cloud snorts, an angry laugh. “Yeah, that’s him all over. Always going on about memories, and setting people up against me just to make sure I have to keep thinking about him even when he’s not there… though, flirting with girls, that’s new. I guess he couldn’t have meant it that way.”

“If he had done, it does not impress me,” she says, raising her chin. “The only men I respect are those who are not interested in my feelings.”

“Uh,” says Cloud, “I’m… really not able to throw shade on being ‘not interested’, but you could do better.”

He looks at her, hoping she’d caught what he’d just said, but she just seems confused.

“Anyway,” he carries on, “if he’s definitely here, that means I’m right to be going. I won’t face him again.”

“Because his image reminds you of the evil things he did?” Samus asks, inching a little closer to him. “His presence reduces you to the weakest part of yourself.”

“It used to,” Cloud says, staring off into space. “But it’s not. It’s that he’s just boring. And he makes me boring, too. The problem isn’t really the man in the Black Cape. He’s a symptom of something worse — he shows up as part of the loop. No matter what I do to fight the Black Cape, I get swallowed by the Black Dog.”

“I can understand that,” Samus says.

“I’m just so tired,” says Cloud. “I just want to know what I’m like without having to fight him. If I’m still anything at all outside of that.”

Samus nods. She lifts her visor and reveals her face, and Cloud blinks. She doesn’t look like what he expected at all. It’s not that it’s bad — in fact, he’s obligated to find her attractive, because she looks a lot like him.

“We are all pushed into roles from time to time. Remember what you said, about a gamer’s memory being tougher than diamond?”

“You’re remembered too?” Cloud asks. “That’s why you have a thing for jerks?”

“The opposite,” says Samus, grinning. “They said, at the time, that that game ruined me forever. But that’s just one game against millions of invincible memories.”

“But the memories aren’t what you actually are,” Cloud says.

Samus stands up.

“Isn’t that my decision?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Even with Samus’s shortcuts, it is dark by the time the Heroes’ Village is visible over the trees.

“We’re back,” she says.

Cloud scans along the row of glowing windows for the empty one that belongs to him, and feels no particular attachment.

“I can’t,” he says, hoping she’ll understand. “Not yet. Just going home and pretending everything’s okay isn’t an option.”

“You’re going to confront him.”

“Yep,” Cloud says, checking his hilt. “He’ll suck me in again, but at least I’ll do it on my terms instead of his. ‘Limits are made to be broken’ — I think someone said that once.” He looks at her, mouth slightly parted — “You don’t have to, but it’d be helpful if you could come with me. Could use the extra firepower, and...”

Samus shrugs.

“I had better just get back,” she says. “Right now, it is still too dangerous for me to be near charismatic jerks.”

“I get it,” Cloud says. “Hope you have a good night. If I’m not back by morning, I’ve gone.” He waves his phone — “I’ll send you a text.”

“With your name removed,” Samus suggests.

“You think I could get away with that?” he says, putting the phone away in his pocket. “Alright! Well, let’s-a-go.”

Samus gives him a thumbs down.

Cloud strikes his best pose for her, and heads off into the night. He’d show up, soon — he always did.

 

* * *

 

It has started raining, and the green light of the sun is trimming the horizon, by the time Cloud sees anyone.

It’s unmistakable. Through the faint gauze of the moonlight through the drizzle, Cloud can see the figure of a tall man. His face is impossible to identify. He is wearing a Black Cape.

It’s the exact same image burned into his mind from when he was with Luigi. Cloud's just about to open his mouth and call out to him, when he realises the figure's surrounded by crates and suitcases.

"Hey," Cloud says, trying to strike up some small talk instead. "Someone keeping you waiting?"

The man tosses back his hooded head in a laugh. Cloud realises that the cape he's wearing isn't black but navy blue - a rain poncho.

"You have no idea how often I get that," he says, in a gravel-scuffed voice Cloud instinctively recognises, but doesn’t know from where. His face is craggy and bearded, with bright, piercing eyes that flash underneath the line of his bandanna.  He gestures upwards. "The extraction chopper. It's on its way."

"Going home?" Cloud asks.

"Fighting was the only thing I was good at. But I have no more reason to fight."

"So you're a guest character and they didn't pay your fee," Cloud translates, sinking down onto a crate. "But the roster got changed a while ago, right? You've been hanging around that long? I haven't seen you around anywhere…"

The man smiles. "Tactical espionage. Good to hear I've still got the knack."

"Oh. Suppose it’s easy to hide when no-one can remember who you are."

"That’s not a problem, I’m no big fan of my own legend. And the Blue Blur hasn't left yet. He always fit in better than I did," the man explains, still peering off into the black sky, pure Hollywood drama. Cloud understands — he’s cinematic too. "Guess you must be a guest as well."

"No, I'm…" Cloud begins, reflexively, then stops. He feels he can be honest to this man. He has the kind of presence that you could give a deathbed speech to. "I thought I belonged here. But it was really all just an illusion I invented for myself. I always do that when I'm ashamed of the truth, and the truth is… I'm just a guest. And I don't know when I'll be pulled back to the colourless place that I came from." He touches his SOLDIER dog tags, flat underneath his combat vest - the dog tags printed with someone else's name. "As soon as I turned up, I made myself forget who I was before, because, here, I could feel things. I couldn’t stand to think that, as a guest, I’d lose all that again. And so now, I guess I don't know who I really am."

The man has been listening carefully. After a short pause to make sure Cloud isn't talking any more, he grunts, apparently amused. "You remind me of a friend of mine."

Cloud looks off into the middle distance. “I think… I want to be forgotten. I just want to be forgotten.”

“The MEMEs,” the other man says. “Really get under your skin after a while, huh?” His heavy hand comes down on Cloud’s shoulder guard — “Maybe try looking at it as your legend. A legend may not be anything other than fiction, but, at the end of the day, neither are we.”

Cloud scowls, though not at the hand on his shoulder. What he really wants isn’t to be forgotten, he realises, it’s the exact opposite. That’s why he came up with this whole delusion in the first place.

The man lets go of his shoulder, with a firm nudge, and Cloud realises that it’s because he’s heard the chopper thumping over the trees.

"That's your ride out," Cloud asks.

"Yeah," the man says. “I’ve been hanging around too long.”

Cloud isn't expecting the man to talk to him any more, and when he does, doesn't know how to respond.

"All of us are guest fighters, whether we know it or not," he says. "There's no such thing as an absolute, timeless character. No matter how unbreakable they may seem in the moment, in the passage of time, memories are fickle; they change with the times. We change the world, and we in turn are changed by the world to fit the needs of its era. Some selves may be happier than others; stronger, more beautiful or more famous; but there's no point obsessing over who we once were, or who we might someday become. We can only ever bring ourselves to the battlefield as we are on the day of the fight, as guests."

Cloud scratches the back of his head.

"Never expected to hear that out of someone like you,” he says. “You're just full of surprises, I guess."

The chopper drowns out whatever words it is that the man is saying, if anything. It descends. Cloud, shielding his eyes from the dust and spraying rain, glances up to see a white-jacketed arm extending from its door, which the man takes. When he looks over his Black Caped shoulder, Cloud gives a Shinra trooper's salute, thinking it more appropriate than a wave.

"Carry on my legacy," the man roars over the pounding rotors, his bandanna tails like brushstrokes in dry ink. Their eyes meet, and Cloud is rooted to the spot. "The spirit of the Guest Character now rests with you — the legendary PlayStation hero, Cloud Strife."

He clambers up into the chopper. Cloud watches, dumbfounded, as its belly scrapes the tops of the trees.

"No way," he mumbles, his own words inaudible to himself over the noise. He has limited resistance to being asked to continue a legacy to begin with, but this is too much. The world is spinning. "He recognised me. No-one here knew my name at first, but he knew… and he’s… and that means that I'm…”

  
And as Cloud grabs his head, his vision hisses white.

"I'm.." he mumbles, sinking, writhing, to his knees. "I'm…"

His heart thumps under his tongue, and his consciousness is ripped out of his body. He falls into the realms of memory.

 

Cloud isn't sure how long it is before he becomes aware of himself enough to feel the rain soaking through his BDU, but he feels a presence beside him. He raises his head to see the Wii Fit Trainer, curled up on her knees with her head on the floor, the same as how he'd been.

"You're wobbling," she tells him, not breaking her pose.

Cloud exhales and sits up. Of course, he realises, she thinks it’s yoga.

"I do that," he agrees. "But the worst is over. For now, I'm steady."

"Yes," the Trainer said, approvingly, "your centre of balance should stay within the yellow dot."

"Thanks," he says, standing, flicking rain out of his hair with a toss of his head, "good to have you watching my back."

The Trainer smiles. "Hold your position, but keep stretching."

 

* * *

 

When Cloud strides onto the white canvas of the Arena, and swings his sword, unable to attract more attention if he had a cartoon finger pointing at his head, Wario makes a nasty laugh through his nose.

“What’s that outfit?”

Cloud shrugs a full-body shrug.

“Just something I threw on. What’s it to you?”

“Couldn’t decide between pants and a skirt?”

“Harder than you’d think, sometimes,” Cloud says, with a careless sweep of his hair. He chops his sword back and forth in a loose cross to warm up his shoulder muscles. “Shall we go?”

Wario meets his eyes, and belches in assent — Cloud launches, parries, and punishes. He catches Wario’s foot in the swirl of a Finishing Touch — his overkilt blasts out behind him, flung away by the stream of air as Wario flies off into the big, bright nothing. Cloud strikes his fake-SOLDIER pose, hand on hip, the ring in the wolf’s mouth rattling from the movement.

It’s just like old days — not the sickly, sepia parts promised by the Black Dog, but something very simple and happy. He’d thought being himself was impossible for so many years, but now he was doing it and it was the easiest thing in the world to be.

And if it could be this easy —

Cloud tumbles to a lower platform, swerving out of the reach of a blow, and booting Wario for the second time into the unknown. His hand touches the line of the clamshell phone in his pocket. He had to confirm his place on another project for soon after this, and he had a feeling it was going to be lucrative.


End file.
